2008 will be my year of downsizing beloved New England gardens and adjusting to small space gardening in plant-growing zone 7 Virginia.
Angela England over at Plants and Bulbs just posted a new poll about "What Plants Do You Grow?" that focused my thinking for 2008.
What my gardening year comes down to is that it is going to be the year of small-space gardening for me. My winter move to a condo-like living arrangement in a zone 7 area means a lot of early spring / autumn / winter container gardening. So, anything new I try needs to be small, a good container plant, or something I can share in communal garden space. Fortunately , residents in my new community have a small "arboretum" as well as a much loved and well-tended hybrid rose garden.
I'll bring my self-watering containers down from New England and probably plant them with small woody ornamentals, my favorite decorative herbs and anything else that can make it through a zone 7 cold spell or overwinter in an unheated storage unit.
Summer work means maintaining my New England garden and downsizing some maintenance-heavy (maintenance nightmare) areas. All last summer I invited avid gardeners into the New England garden to dig small woody ornamental shrubs that resulted from natural layering.
Those plants are mostly selections of physically small selections of native North American plants like Fothergilla and Clethra. Next autumn, I can bring back my own small layed cuttings to plant in my VA garden space now that I have a better idea of what I have to work with here in zone 7. There will still be plenty of cuttings left in my New England garden to share!
No doubt about it...a lot of gardening choices await me in 2008.
